The invention deals with a billet live roller feed bed upstream of cooling beds, where worm type conveyor rollers, arranged parallel to the roller bed rollers, transfer the rolled material onto the cooling bed transversely to the conveyance direction.
Prior to transferring the billets, coming finish-rolled and subdivided into commercial lengths from a rolling mill to the cooling bed, it is necessary to brake the billets to a stop. Only then are they lifted onto the cooling bed in accordance with the cooling bed cycle, or they slide in a known manner known such as onto the first grate of the cooling bed. Since, to be sure, billets having different dimensions are rolled in a rolling mill, it is unavoidable that the billets arrive on the runout table with speeds differing considerably from each other, this from one to another dimension, because billets of smaller cross-section are rolled at a speed several times higher in comparison with the largest possible billet dimension to be rolled in the rolling mill.
The runoff speed, changing as a function of the rolling program, results in the billets having braking travels of different length, which billets must come to a stop prior to being transferred to the cooling bed. It must be borne in mind that the square of the travel speed is inserted when calculating the braking travel, assuming a constant coefficient of friction .mu.. For a smooth operational sequence and an occupancy of the cooling bed according to the cooling bed cycle, in spite of that, considerable control measures and a large construction resource are required in known cooling beds, as for instance in a live roller feed bed of this type the coupling of several rolls which requires appropriate clutches.